1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications terminals, communication control methods and programs, and more particularly to such apparatus, methods and programs with which users of the communications terminals who purchased commodities and/or services from stores or the like pay the same electronically and wirelessly for the commodities and/or services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Non-contact ICs or IC tags that send/receive information in a non-contact manner are watched as new electronic devices. Since the non-contact IC is furthermore smaller than a general IC card, it can be easily housed within a small communications terminal such as a cellular phone, a PHS or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Thus, account settlement systems are proposed in which a non-contact IC housed within the small communications terminal is connected by a wireless communications channel, for example of an ISM (Industry Science Medical) band, to an account settlement machine installed in a store such that a user of the communications terminal can pay the store for commodities and/or service that the user received.
For example, Unexamined Patent Japanese Publication No. 2003-187334 discloses an account settlement system in which a user of a cellular phone pays for his or her purchased commodities in a credit card in a reduced time. In this system, when purchasing commodities, the user stores commodity information, including a commodity identifier for identifying the commodities uniquely, into his or her cellular telephone or IC tag which has already stored his or her customer ID information, and then sends the customer ID and commodity information to the account settlement machine.
Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-110577 discloses a lumpsum charging system in which a travel agency makes arrangements for transport facilities and hotels for the respective staff members of a corporation such as a company, reserves them for the staff members, using their personal IDs stored on their respective magnetic cards, IC cards, noncontact IC tags and/or cellular phones, and then collectively charges the corporation for the transportation, traveling and hotel expenses that the respective staff members must bear.
Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-242229 discloses a building tenant support system in which a service provider provides the tenants with various services, using information that identifies the respective tenants outputted from their short-distance wireless devices using the ISM band, wireless devices using a cellular phone band, wireless devices using a PHS band, and/or non-contact IC tags using a wireless frequency band.
When a user of a cellular phone who purchased commodities/services from a store or the like receives an incoming call or e-mail during paying the store or the like wirelessly for the commodities and/or services, using a non-contact IC housed within the cellular phone, the user would probably hastily perform such a wrong paying operation that wireless communication between the non-contact IC and an account settlement system stored within the store or the like is hindered by an on-hook operation on the call or an auto-answering operation on the e-mail. On the other hand, the other party would feel uneasy when the user does not answer the call though the other party can hear the ring tone.